I love meeting the children of Lehi in spotless white in the numerous temples in the Mexico South Area, where I am currently serving. I feel as President Gordon B. Hinckley did at the dedication of the Guatemala City temple:

“Thou kind and gracious Father, our hearts swell with gratitude for thy remembrance of the sons and daughters of Lehi, the many generations of our fathers and mothers who suffered so greatly and who walked for so long in darkness. Thou hast heard their cries and seen their tears. Now there will be opened to them the gates of salvation and eternal life” (Guatemala City Guatemala Temple dedicatory prayer, in “Their Cries Heard, Their Tears Seen,” Church News, 23 Dec. 1984, 4).

I have seen humble descendants of Lehi come down from the mountains to that temple and openly weep as they stood there in awe.

He watched over the Lamanite work, was responsible for the placement program, and prophesied of their progress. While he was President, the Church prospered greatly in the lands of Lehi—Mexico, Central and South America, the islands of the sea, and the lands of many Indian tribes of North America.

At the service in Wellington, Utah, for Elder Wilson, President Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor in the First Presidency, spoke of the work the two elders were accomplishing: “What a mission, to bring light and understanding and truth and testimony, and to witness to the sons and daughters of Lehi of their great inheritance. … We wonder why [these deaths] happened. … We can only say that wisdom of God is greater than our wisdom, that mortal life … is only a passing episode in an eternal journey, and that it really doesn’t matter whether we are here for a long time or a short time in this probation.”

“I think as we weep here,” President Hinckley continued, “there will be those who weep with gladness on the other side of the veil. I think particularly Lehi and Sariah and their children and progeny rejoice over the good work of one who tried to lift and help some of their posterity in the land of Bolivia.”

The Villahermosa Mexico Temple was dedicated by President Thomas S. Monson in four sessions on 21 May.
“May Thy eternal purposes concerning the sons and daughters of Lehi be realized in this sacred house.

These descendants of the Lamanites and others are people with a great past, and with the enlightening power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, they are people with a great future. One of them was sustained yesterday as a General Authority of this church. Recently there were over 8,000 of them assembled in the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco, Peru, to hear the Lamanite Generation from Brigham Young University

Almost 400 pairs of eyes read over the registration forms for the youth conference in Riverside, California, and there was not a blue pair in the bunch. And that’s what made this a very special and unique conference. It was one of several youth conferences held for young Lamanite members of the Church. They came to Riverside from Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California

In wards and branches in many places, these children of Lehi are literally restoring to the house of Jacob the “knowledge of the covenant” (3 Ne. 5:25) that their forebears made with God.
..As Lehi’s seed, we realize that through our baptismal and temple covenants, a great work is to be done before the Lord’s coming—among our people as well as by our people for others.”

During the 1830s, before Brigham Young started on a mission to Native Americans in the state of New York, the Prophet Joseph Smith laid his hands on Brigham’s head and committed unto him the keys necessary to open the “gospel to every Lamanite nation.” 4 This priesthood blessing, which surprised and unsettled Elder Young, weighed heavily on him for the rest of his life. It gave him a lifelong duty to help the Native American people.

When John Rainer was a young boy in Taos Pueblo, New Mexico, one of his favorite parts of the day was dusk. Like most young Indian children, John would run and play and do chores all day long...
One of the non-Lamanites who studied with Brother Rainer at BYU was Ingrid Jensen of Payson, Utah

Elder Mark E. Petersen, a member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, wrote: “As the ancient Israelites suffered a dispersion which sprinkled them among all the nations, so the descendants of Laman and Lemuel [sons of Lehi] were sifted over the vast areas of the western hemisphere. They are found from pole to pole” (Children of Promise, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1981, p. 31; emphasis added).

He might arouse people’s interest in the Book of Mormon by raising the question of the origin of Native Americans and then describing the pedigree of Father Lehi and his posterity as set forth in the Book of Mormon.

Larry J. EchoHawk, twenty-seven, a Pawnee and the first Indian admitted to the Utah Bar Association, keeps the Book of Mormon on his desk. “I learned a lot about being an Indian from it,” he says. “As a boy, growing up in Farmington, New Mexico, I was ashamed to be an Indian. My parents weren’t, but I read those books and wondered if I was like that—savage and ignorant. The teacher would read ‘Indian’ and I’d cringe.”

He was baptized with his family at the age of fourteen. “For an Indian looking for pride, the Book of Mormon was a wonderful experience,” he remembers. “It was really an uplift to me.” The pride in heritage that his parents taught him, his experience going to Brigham Young University, and especially his research into Indian law at law school completed the process.

“Only one thing I don’t understand,” he grins. “It says we’ll be a white and delightsome people someday. I like the color I am. In fact, I don’t know any Indian who wants to change.”

There are certainly things he’d like to change about the way Indians are treated, though. About 95 percent of his clients are Indians and it “makes my blood boil” to see examples of discrimination by individuals, tokenism, especially in government, and paternalism, even in the Church.

“People still react to those old stereotypes,” he comments. “Some leaders don’t have faith in the capabilities of Lamanites. Occasionally when I moved into a new ward in California, I could see some reserve on the part of the bishop to use me—until he found out I was a lawyer. Do you have to have a law degree to be real?”
...
The gospel is going to be restored to the Lamanites—to my family and friends. We’re not going to be a mediocre people. We’re going to be leaders in the Church and the nation. I know it’s going to happen. I can see it beginning now.”

One unusual story is that of Darryl Quesada, a Navajo Indian who lives in Whiteriver, Arizona.
...
President Kimball thinks Darryl is pretty special too! He said that in his mind Darryl and other boys like him “exemplify a new generation of Lamanites emerging in the Church who are prepared for missionary service.”

“You would not believe what has happened in Latin America. You would be overwhelmed if you had the opportunity to shake hands with Lamanite stake presidents and bishops who have come out of the world and embraced the gospel.

6. Kirtland. Missionaries who had been sent to the Lamanites stopped here in 1830 and baptized Sidney Rigdon and others in the area. Kirtland was the headquarters of the Church from early February 1831 to 12 January 1838. The first temple of this dispensation was built here and was dedicated on 27 March 1836 (see D&C 109).

Of course, nobody knows exactly where the events ancient prophets describe in that scripture took place, but “when we find something that’s from the same time period, it makes me stop and think that at least there were real people who lived then, that maybe a Nephite or a Lamanite actually held this [arrowhead]. It brings it all to life and helps me know that the scriptures are real. They aren’t just a story somebody made up.”

Chief Sparrow also desires to emphasize spirituality among her people. Under her leadership, community meetings are now opened and closed with prayer. “The Book of Mormon promises that the Lamanites will blossom as a rose,” she says. “I feel right now that our people are ready to blossom.”

In September 1830, the Lord called Oliver Cowdery by revelation to “go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them” (D&C 28:8). The call came a few months after the United States Congress had passed the Indian Removal Bill, an act providing for the relocation of all tribes within United States borders to points beyond.

Peter Whitmer Jr., Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, and Frederick Williams also received calls to preach to the Lamanites. The 1831 expulsion of these missionaries from Indian territory and their subsequent proposal to establish territorial schools are documented in letters from the contending parties, which are reproduced at the end of this article.

“Bless thy work that it shall blossom and grow in this nation and its neighbor nations of South America. Remember, Father, thine ancient covenant with the children of Lehi that in the latter days thou wouldst favor them and bring to them a knowledge of their Redeemer. Make them strong in faith and magnify them in leadership in thy kingdom,” he said.
...
He told of past trips in Peru and Bolivia when he had seen the children of Lehi in poverty, oppressed in spirit by the scarcity of gospel truth among them, and cried within himself, “How long, oh Lord, how long?”

During three days the ordinances, blessings, and sealings of the temple were administered to the children of Lehi in their own tongue by these devoted workers, who had made a special effort to learn in Spanish the instructions that they needed to impart.

The President said that “the coming five years will be unbelievable if we will do our part.” He then reported that today “we have some half million Lamanite members in the Church, in the South Seas, in North and South America,” but that this represents only a small portion of the 60 million possible Lamanites in the world.

“A great many of you Regional Representatives are working in the areas of the children of Lehi,” said President Kimball. He reported that of the 840 stakes in the Church at present, “89 stakes are entirely Lamanite, 100 stakes have sizable numbers of Lamanites in them, and then we have approximately 380 stakes with some mixture of Lamanites in them.”
...
President Kimball also shared what he described as “my vision for the people of the Lamanites.” He had been assigned to visit Mexico in 1946, three years after being sustained as an apostle and the same year he was appointed chairman of the Church Indian Committee by President George Albert Smith.

“I was dreaming for the people of Mexico,” he said, “and I had a dream of your progress and development. This is precisely what I dreamed. I got up and wrote my dream. Maybe it was a vision: ‘As I look into the future, I see other Lamanites from the isles of the sea and the American continents rise to a great destiny. …

“ ‘I see you children of Lehi with flocks on thousands of hills. Instead of seeing you work for others, I see you managing; the owners of farms, ranches, homes and gardens.

Since the days of George Q. Cannon in Hawaii (1851–54), the Church leaders had more and more frequently alluded to the idea that the Polynesians were descendants of Lehi, the early Book Of Mormon prophet. Although the relationship between the Polynesian peoples and the adventurer Hagoth (see Alma 63:5–8) is not clear—he being a Nephite and the Polynesians appearing to be Lamanites—Church leaders have time and time again referred to the Polynesians as children of Lehi

Certainly they [Lamanites] have mixed with many other lineages at the far reaches of their dispersal in the Americas and most of the islands of the Pacific since the time when Moroni bade them farewell in A.D. 421.

Not until the revelations of Joseph Smith, bringing forth the Book of Mormon, did any one know of these migrants. It was not known before, but now the question is fully answered. Now the Lamanites number about sixty million; they are in all of the states of America from Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Point Barrows, and they are in nearly all the islands of the sea from Hawaii south to southern New Zealand.
...
The descendants of this mighty people were called Indians by Columbus in 1492 when he found them here.

The term Lamanite includes all Indians and Indian mixtures, such as the Polynesians, the Guatemalans, the Peruvians, as well as the Sioux, the Apache, the Mohawk, the Navajo, and others. It is a large group of great people.
...
Today we have many Lamanite leaders in the Church. For example, in Tonga, where 20 percent of all the people in the islands belong to the Church, we have three large stakes. Two of them are presided over wholly by Lamanites and the other almost wholly by them. There are three stakes in Samoa and another is to be organized in those small Samoan islands. Four more stakes with Lamanite leaders!

There are three stakes of Zion in Mexico City with Mexican leaders—Lamanite leaders. The stake presidencies, the bishops, the high council, the auxiliary leaders—everybody, with one or two exceptions—are Lamanites. In Monterrey, Mexico, in Guatemala, in Lima, in New Zealand, and elsewhere we have stakes of Zion with all their appropriate leaders.

That is in direct fulfillment of the prophecies that were made, and it is a great change.
...
One of the first things that Joseph Smith did when he was organizing the Church was to preach the gospel to the Lamanites himself, and then he sent his brethren
...
In 1963, 23 percent of all the baptisms in the Church were Lamanite baptisms. There were twenty-five thousand in one year. In 1970 there were even more. All this indicates the responsiveness of the Lamanites to the truth.
...
We have probably thirty thousand Lamanite members in Central America, and I remind you this is the result of only a relatively few years. There must be about one hundred thousand Polynesians in the Church, so that we have now approximately a quarter million Lamanites. I suppose a rough guess would give us only a few thousand twenty years ago. Now we have a quarter million in this short period of two or three decades. We have been doing missionary work with some of the Polynesians for a hundred years and more.

It is pleasing to know that we have hundreds of Lamanite missionaries who are out for two years just like all the non-Lamanites
...
It might be interesting to know that of nearly one hundred missions, the four highest of all are Lamanite missions. That is, the Mexico North Mission, the Guatemala-El Salvador Mission, the Mexico Mission, and the Tonga Mission. These are the four highest in the world.
...
Of all missions, nine of the first twenty-one are Lamanite missions.